On Tuesday 21 November 2023, the Ivan Grohar Primary School inaugurated the didactic corner-gallery Pod Homanovo lipo (Under the Homan’s Lime Tree), which was created within the framework of the project School Renovation for New Generations, supported by the Norwegian Mechanism and the Ministry of Cohesion and Regional Development. The first visitors to the gallery Pod Homanovo lipo were school pupils, who travelled on site to a part of Škofjeloško’s town centre and experienced the corner as a place to socialise and educate about cultural heritage in a pleasant and interesting way.
The school corridor has been given a new look and a new content dedicated to learning about the cultural heritage of the local area, where students and other visitors to the school will be able to discover, with the help of dedicated teachers, that cultural heritage can be interesting, creative and timeless.
The gallery was created with the efforts of art teacher Petra Primc Marko from the Ivan Grohar Primary School and Neža Gubanc and her team from the Secondary School of Woodworking (ŠCŠL), with the support of project partners from the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Primorska, the Institute for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, the Municipality of Škofja Loka and the Association of Historic Towns of Slovenia.
The spirit and purpose of the Corner was summarised by Professor Petra Primc Marko.
“ I wanted to recreate a space that would bring people and cultural heritage together in a welcoming way, as if it were a walk throughyou walk through the city, look in the window, socialise and educate at the same time. A place where students themselves can contribute and educate themselves and others.It’s easiest to draw from the environment, so we brought a distinctive part of the old town centre into the school. The pillar has become a lime tree, the Homan House is represented by exhibition squares, and the photo wallpaper is a set of architecturalh elements and buildings of Škofja Loka.The hoardings are like houses where you can hang your students’ artwork, there is also a blackboard and a hoarding that offers more possibilities such as games, drawing with rope and bookshelves. A didactic corner can be a classroom, it can be a gallery, it can be a cosy gathering place. The vision of the Corner is to bring together and connect different institutions, schools, institutions, teachers and heritage professionals. Perhaps it is the students who have acquired cultural heritage knowledge at school who will nurture this knowledge, receive additional training, have an interest and perhaps one day pass on the knowledge themselves to new generations in the gallery under the Homan lime tree.”
The project manager Mateja Hafner Dolenc, Secretary General of the Association of Historical Towns of Slovenia, the project’s lead partner, took the opportunity to thank the headmaster Mark Primožič and the team of the Ivan Grohar Primary School, headed by the art professor Petra Primc Marko, coordinator of the project School of Renovation for New Generations, for their active participation and expressed her joy that cultural heritage is being connected to children in a fun and interesting way at an early age, as this is the only way they can strengthen their relationship to it.
At the opening ceremony, students and invited guests saw a collage of photographs of architectural elements of the Old Town. The collage is the result of a collaborative effort between teachers and pupils in the 7th grade art class. In addition to the photo wallpaper, the star of the corner was the first exhibition on the theme of paving and hiding. Visitors walked past samples of the pavement, which were made under the expert guidance of pupils in the art elective. Just a step further on, products made of glass used for roofing from the past to the present were on display. The products were made in a workshop where students learnt the ancient craft of wing making. In the spirit of cultural heritage, the gallery breathed life as a space for gathering, singing folk songs and sweetening homemade biscuits.
